Word.ws English Dictionary

local

UK/ˈləʊ.kl̩//ˈloʊ.kl̩/

local adjective: from or in a nearby location. Also the clipping of local train.

Adjective

local (comparative more local, superlative most local)

  1. From or in a nearby location.
    • We prefer local produce.
    • Not unnaturally, “Auntie” took this communication in bad part.[…]Next day she[…]tried to recover her ward by the hair of the head. Then, thwarted, the wretched creature went to the police for help; she was versed in the law, and perhaps had spared no pains to keep on good terms with the local...1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XLIV, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC, page 361
  2. Connected directly to a particular computer, processor, etc.; able to be accessed offline.
    • local disk drive
    • local file
    Antonyms:
    remote
  3. Having limited scope (either lexical or dynamic); only accessible within a certain portion of a program.
    Antonyms:
    global
  4. (not comparable) Satisfied by at least one open neighborhood of every point.
    • A Hausdorff space satisfying local compactness need not be (globally) compact!
  5. (not comparable) Satisfied by arbitrarily small open neighborhoods of every point.
  6. (not comparable) Satisfied by every finitely generated subgroup.
  7. (not comparable) Such that the following conditions are equivalent: (1) P holds for R (M); (2) P holds for the localization R_p (M_p) for all prime ideals p of R; (3) P holds for the localization R_m (M_m) for all maximal ideals m of R.
    • Flatness is a local property.
  8. (not comparable) Detectable from the behavior of the normalizers of the nontrivial p-subgroups.
  9. Having a unique maximal (left) ideal.
  10. Of or pertaining to a restricted part of an organism.
    • local lesion
    • The patient didn't want to be sedated, so we applied only local anesthesia.
    Synonyms:
    topical
  11. Descended from an indigenous population.
    • Hawaiian Pidgin is spoken by the local population.
  12. (quantum mechanics) Exhibiting or pertaining to locality (adhering to the principle of locality).

Noun

local (plural locals)

  1. A person who lives in or near a given place.
    • It's easy to tell the locals from the tourists.
    • Taunton station is busy - even more so when the inbound working of my Bristol train arrives, laden with the usual mix of 'staycationers' and locals.2020 December 2, Paul Bigland, “My weirdest and wackiest Rover yet”, in Rail, page 66
  2. A branch of a nationwide organization such as a trade union.
    • I'm in the TWU, too. Local 6.
    • Citing the risk involved with being out as a gay person and a union activist while simultaneously dealing with racism, Susan notes that there are no out gays or lesbians of color in her local, though its membership is about 80 percent people of color.1990 February 4, Pam Mitchell, “Pro-Union And Queer”, in Gay Community News, volume 17, number 29, page 18
  3. (UK) One's nearest or regularly frequented public house or bar.
    • I got barred from my local, so I've started going all the way into town for a drink.
    • As they take me to my local down the street.2010, “Nothing”, in Science & Faith, performed by The Script
  4. A locally scoped identifier.
    • Functional programming languages usually don't allow changing the immediate value of locals once they've been initialized, unless they're explicitly marked as being mutable.
    • Globals are visible anywhere in your application, whereas locals are visible only in the function in which they're declared.2012, Cesar Otero, Rob Larsen, Professional jQuery, page 25
  5. (US, slang) An item of news relating to the place where the newspaper is published.
  6. An independent trader who acts for themselves rather than on behalf of investors.
    • On most futures exchanges, there are two major types of futures traders/members: commission brokers and locals.2009, R. Stafford Johnson, Bond Evaluation, Selection, and Management, page 316
    Synonyms:
    floor trader
  7. (derogatory, slang) A Twitter user who is not a part of Stan Twitter.
    • Her camera roll is filled with pictures and videos of her idol, she doesn't let any of her friends see her account because "no locals allowed", […]2018, Max Ghasserani, "Spill The Tea On A Sister Skinny Legend", The Investigator (Green Valley High School, Henderson, NV), October 2018, page 25
    • Locals are characterised by their seeming lack of involvement or ~expertise~ on the platform.2018 October 16, Fergal Smiddy, “The 6 Types of People You Meet on Twitter”, in University Express, University College Cork, Ireland, page 11

Adverb

local (comparative more local, superlative most local)

  1. In the local area; within a city, state, country, etc.
    • It's never been more important to buy local.
    • Coca-Cola, for example, shifted its stance, unsuccessfully, between “think global, act global” and “think local, act local” during the tenures of three different CEOs in the late 1990s and early 2000s.2016, Vinod K. Jain, Global Strategy: Competing in the Connected Economy, page 122

Also used as

local is also the clipping of local train.

local is also the clipping of local anesthetic.

local meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu

local in Hindi

of a nearby location
स्थानीय sthānīya, क्षेत्रीय kṣetrīya
a person who lives near a given place
स्थानीय sthānīya, क्षेत्रीय kṣetrīya
a branch of an organization
शाखा śākhā, मंडल maṇḍal, खंड khaṇḍ

local in Tamil

உள்ளூர்

local in Marathi

स्थानिक

local in Urdu

a person who lives near a given place
مقامی
More languagesFewer languages
local in Bengali
আঞ্চলিক ancolik
local in Telugu
స్థానికం, స్థానిక
local in Malayalam
തദ്ദേശ taddēśa
local in Kannada
ಸ್ಥಳೀಯ, ಸ್ಥಳೀಯರಾದ
local in Punjabi
ਸਥਾਨਕ, ਸਥਾਨਿਕ
local in Gujarati
સ્થાનિક, સ્થાનીક
local in Odia
ସ୍ଥାନୀଯ଼
local in Nepali
स्थानीय
local in Tagalog
pampook, pandito
local in Arabic
مَحَلِّيّ maḥalliyy
local in Malay
setempat, lokal, tempatan
local in Persian
محلی mahalli
local in Thai
ส่วนท้องถิ่น sùan-tóng-tìn, ท้องถิ่น tóng-tìn
local in Vietnamese
địa phương

Examples of local in a sentence

  • The panel shows both local and remote sites.
  • Then, thwarted, the wretched creature went to the police for help; she was versed in the law, and perhaps had spared no pains to keep on good terms with the local constabulary.1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XLIV, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC, page...
  • A supplier many miles away would then take the part to the local matternet station for airborne dispatch via drone.2012 December 1, “An internet of airborne things”, in The Economist, volume 405, number 8813, page 3 (Technology Quarterly):
  • Heck, even locals sometimes use GIFs of her when they feel like tweeting with taste.2019, Avin Abelardo, "Deep Dive Into The World Of Troll Twitter Memes", Echoes (University of the Philippines), February/March 2019, page 60

All 40 example sentences with local

Synonyms of local

Antonyms

Forms of local

Adjective
comparativemore local
superlativemost local
alternative abbreviationloc.
Noun
plurallocals
Adverb
comparativemore local
superlativemost local

Plural of local: locals

Origin of local

From Middle English local, from Late Latin locālis (“belonging to a place”), possibly also via Old French local; ultimately from Latin locus (“a place”). The ring-theoretic senses derive from Krull, who first referred to Noetherian commutative rings with a unique maximal ideal as "Stellenring" (Stellen (“place”) + ring) in 1938. The term was inspired by algebraic geometry, where local rings encode information about the behavior of curves (surfaces, etc.) at points; hence, describe "local" behavior.

Words formed from local

Phrases with local

40 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with local

Questions about local

What does local mean?
Local means from or in a nearby location.
What is local in Hindi?
Local in Hindi is स्थानीय (sthānīya), क्षेत्रीय (kṣetrīya), शाखा (śākhā). See Local meaning in Hindi.
How do you use local in a sentence?
The panel shows both local and remote sites.
What part of speech is local?
Local can be an adjective, a noun or an adverb.
How do you pronounce local?
Local is pronounced /ˈləʊ.kl̩/ (UK).

Words near local in the dictionary

  1. loc'd out
  2. loc.
  3. loc. cit.
  4. loca
  5. Locach
  6. local
  7. local administrative unit
  8. local administrative units
  9. local anaesthetic
  10. local anaesthetics
  11. local anesthetic

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: local (page history and authors); local (Tamil, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); local (Marathi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); local (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); local (Kannada, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); local (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); local (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); local (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); local (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-local.ogg.

Cite this entry: “local.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/local. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.